PPRuNe Forums - View Single Post - AAIB investigation to Hawker Hunter T7 G-BXFI 22 August 2015
Old 3rd Mar 2017, 18:18
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EDMJ
 
Join Date: Nov 2007
Location: Munich, Germany
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Quote:
Should the CAA now consider rescinding their knee-jerk restriction on "vintage jets"? The media pressure on the Government (i.e. the CAA) to "do something" about these old jets endangering people on the ground should have been resisted at the time. After all, there was never any suggestion that the Hunter had suffered any form of structural or control problem.

Did you miss the 40 pages or so about maintenance/permits/airworthiness/ejection seats?
The CAA, the most liberal aviation regulator in Europe, set generous limits to operate within, some people chose to operate right up at the threshold of the limits and failed. Then there were the aforementioned airworthiness issues. Hence, the CAA could not have responded differently, and there will most definitely be more, namely that the limits will certainly be drawn tighter in an obligatory attempt to prevent something like this from happening again.

Whilst certainly not advocating any more restrictions on display aircraft, it would seem that the low-level manouvres of the Red Bull air racers, or indeed any other piston engined display aircraft were considered a much safer form of entertainment than "vintage" jets (err, how old are the Red Arrow's Hawks....?).
Lighter and slower, i.e. low energy aircraft of the Extra and Pitts type, need less space, and a misjudged rolling/looping maneuver is more likely to "only" kill the pilot.

To some extent with the benefit of hindsight, I'm wondering why rolling/looping maneuvers with high-energy aircraft were not taken off the airshow programs many years ago. At least Rolls-Royce's Spitfire and the Firefly crash at Duxford spring to mind...
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